Anatomy of a Murder, 1959, Otto Preminger, U.S.

Or, for that matter almost any other Preminger movie you’d care to name. His style was claustrophobic—lots of people jammed into tight spaces—and he had a sour view of people’s infinite capacity for duplicitous behavior. But he was a master of dank melodramatics (see also Advise and Consent, Whirlpool, Where the Sidewalk Ends) and most of his pictures ended on a forgiving note. Perhaps he was obliging the studio’s demand for happy endings. Or maybe that touch of Austrian sentimentality that he never quite eradicated from his haughty, cultivated personality. Whatever. In any case, this is a brilliantly cast, bitingly cynical courtroom drama